Resources / The Holy Qur'an

The Noble Qur’an, without a doubt, is the crown of all of us because it is the book that our Sublime Lord has sent to us. What a great honor! What a sweet favor and distinction! It is necessary to kiss this superb scripture over and over, to put it to our heads, rub it on our faces and eyes and to show it the greatest esteem.  

It has warnings [given] to societies of the past and news of those to come. Within it are to be found commands, laws meant for us. Only when we learn them in the best way, can we attain the pleasure of the True [God]. There is no possibility of escape. No excuse for laziness is possible. The cure for our bodies, the remedy for our material and spiritual illnesses is the Qur’an. When the individual, the family, the society, the community [of Muslims], and finally all of humanity conform to it, they can obtain peace of mind and happiness.

Are we teaching and learning a book so valuable, so important for this world and the hereafter, in a manner commensurate with its position? No, unfortunately! In our homes, the Qur’an, strangely, is sitting sorrowfully. There are no satisfying [Qur’anic] commentaries that the new generations would understand. The volumes of commentaries on the shelves in our libraries are gathering dust. Many a Muslim cannot manage even to read it aloud [in the original Arabic]. Of those who do read it, most do not show regard for good recitation and enunciation, or venerate it and revere it [as it deserves]; or, if they do read it well, they do not know the judgments that are in it. As for most of us, we do not comply with Islamic precepts; we lead a way of life at odds with the Noble Qur’an. The great scholar Hasan-i Basrî said:

“The Noble Qur’an was revealed so that it might guide people’s actions and that its commands might be followed. However, now only its reading and recitation are being performed.”¹ A similar statement was narrated by the famous companion Abdullah b. Mes’ûd. All of this goes to show that getting hung up on the words and not getting down to the essence—forgetting the main aim, getting bogged down in the details, and getting tied up in talk and not moving on to action, work, and performance of what is needed—is an old, widespread, ugly, and very dangerous disease. We are required to rescue ourselves from this disease, dear readers! On this subject, the famous Sufi scholar Abu Abdurrahman Muhammad ibn Hussein al-Sulami (d. 412 H/1021 CE) mentioned a dynamic and very valuable method. He said: 

Our masters who taught us knowledge conveyed to us that as soon as they learned ten noble verses (or “A Noble Ten”), they would stop there. They would go no further until they first put those ten verses into practice. Only then would they continue on. We, too, have followed that principle. In this way, did we learn the Noble Qur’an together and side by side with its application (executing its commands).²  

Ignorance is disaster. As for knowledge without action, it has an evil result, dear readers! Let us snap to. Let us defeat indolence and ignorance. Let us take to heart the precious book of Allah on High with new ardor, ten verses by ten, dozen by dozen, learn its words by heart, and apply its commands. Let us crown our heads and guide our lives with it.

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FOOTNOTES

* Başmakaleler 1: İslâm Dergisi Başmakaleleri, Istanbul: Server İletişim, 2011 (from an article dated March 1984), p. 35-36.

1. In a similar vein, see İbn Receb, Câmi’u’l-ulûm ve’l-hikem, p. 343-344.

2.See Mizzî, Tehzîbü’l-kemâl, trans. no: 3222; Zehebî, Tehzîbü’ttehzîb, trans. no: 317; Kâşif, trans. no: 2681; İbn Hacer, Takrîbü’ttehzîb, trans. no: 3271.